


He Who Can Endure It

by abogadobarba (daltonfightclub)



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: ADA Carisi, Barba is SOFT, Character Study, Getting Together, Inaccurate Catholicism, Kind of a post-undiscovered country fix-it, Lawyer Dominick "Sonny" Carisi Jr., Light Angst, M/M, Reunited and It Feels So Good, Rita Calhoun always stirring up trouble, Sonny POV, and a wild Jack McCoy appears, how S21 will happen (in my dreams), so canon compliant-adjacent with serious liberties taken, to be clear there's no barisi angst JUST love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 09:14:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20580080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daltonfightclub/pseuds/abogadobarba
Summary: They were always so close to the precipice of something more, but ever the pragmatists, were also privy to the many ways in which a whisper of impropriety could destroy a career such as theirs, cut down a man by half and leave him aching besides—and that’s before accounting for the scandal of it all.But before all else, Sonny was a man of His word. So, he learned to endure it.OR: The one in which Carisi is the new ADA and in a little bit over his head (with both the law AND Barba).





	He Who Can Endure It

**Author's Note:**

> after weeks and weeks of writer's block, i finally managed to squeak out this story, which is great timing because i knew it needed to be done before the premiere, when all my dreams of Sonny Carisi coming into his own as the new ADA will be dashed forevermore!! i didn't choose this life, the headcanon chose me, okay??
> 
> honestly, this was just meant to be a happy little vignette and somehow turned into an extended character study for Sonny, his faith, and his father's latent issues with, well, Sonny. while somehow the catholicism of it all managed to sneak its way in here, it's really NOT the focus, and given that i am the least religious person on the planet, i apologize in advance for any inaccurate liberties i may have taken with it. such is life.
> 
> anway, hope you enjoy! lmk what you think, comments, kudos etc. etc. i know ADA Carisi isn't the most popular trope atm, but i'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter, esp. how i portrayed it here. 
> 
> thanks in advance for reading!! xx

Some many years ago, long before their lives and differences carved out a crater-sized gulf between them, Dominick Carisi would recite verse to his son’s eager ears with a strength of conviction that proved intimidating and comforting in equal measure.

Despite his misgivings over ever attaining such surity about his faith or place or otherwise, Sonny would turn to those words when the weight of the world and its many expectations seemed too heavy a burden for one good Catholic boy from Staten Island to bear. 

“And God is faithful,” Sonny would repeat with his eyes clenched tight, late at night with his family already deep in the throes of slumber, huddled over his bed with aching knees or under the covers with hot breath. “He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.”

Looking back on it with a lifetime’s worth of perspective and a categorical ton of experience bearing witness to the true atrocities born from the most savage temptations man might entertain, Sonny knows that those words, despite his father’s best intentions, were not words of consolation as much as they were that of repudiation.

Still, Sonny can’t deny that—even now that he’s closer to his fourth decade on this planet than his third—he still hears the whispers of scripture in his ears when faced with a particularly unpleasant situation or morally ambiguous choice: when it’s seemingly impossible to reconcile being a man of the law with being a man of faith; when he assumes an otherwise grotesque lie in the service of some archaic notion of justice; or when he’s staring down a monster and calculating just how many seconds it would require to take the breath from their lungs, the life from their eyes.

Sure, Sonny’s understanding of what qualifies as amoral temptation has evolved over the years, hammered out from crude ruminations on sex and attraction to convoluted ideologies of life and its worth, but those words and his dependence thereon—save for a few choice occasions—have not. 

_ He will also provide a way out so that you can endure it_, he prays as he stares down the callous barrel of a loaded gun, wishing for a small miracle or a swift mercy, knowing full well the two may never meet.

_ He will also provide a way out so that you can endure it,_ he whispers into his sister’s ear as she sobs into his shoulder, wrecked for having uncovered the ugliest truths that a mother might encounter.

_ He will also provide a way out so that you can endure it, _he scribbles at the end of a letter to an estranged friend and once-colleague, a letter colored as much by the depths of his own despair as the desires he didn’t dare indulge.

(Sonny, of course, never did send that letter, though he takes it less as evidence against God’s faithfulness as much as proof of his own cowardice.)

Suffice it to say there’s been no challenge beyond peril nor situation so moribund that precluded Sonny from being bolstered by the words of his childhood—at least none such exceeding what he can reasonably bear.

Simply put, he _ has _ endured it: over and over and over again, he has put his faith, and his family, and his squad, and his discipline high and above all else to the detriment of nothing more so than his private longings and temptations.

He has _ endured_, that much is certain; but in the end, is he really any better for it?

*****

Perhaps that same dedication to endurance at the expense of all else is why Sonny Carisi finds himself sat, very much alone, on a stiff stool under dim lights, stooped over a sticky bar with a short glass of liquor that doesn’t quite feel right, much in the same way that his new and too expensive oxfords don’t quite feel right or the way walking into the courtroom this morning didn’t quite feel right either.

What it really comes down to is that, for the first time in as many years as he can remember, Sonny made a decision not by way of duty, nor service to others, nor fidelity to an outdated scripture, but instead catalogued his every ambition, meticulously calculated the possible outcomes of every scenario, then threw caution to the wind and made a choice for no other reason than want for a presumed and definitive path towards regaining his sanity.

Three months ago to the day, Sonny packed up the sparse belongings on his desk, turned in his badge, made his goodbyes to people he’d seen more of in the last six years than his own sisters, and walked out of Manhattan’s 16th Precinct not as a decorated detective but simply as himself: an imperfect but good man who no longer felt obliged to endure.

At least, he no longer felt obliged to endure _ that _ particular brand of hell, for it wasn’t but twelve hours later that he walked up the steps of the New York County Supreme Court to take another kind of oath, one which was guaranteed to solicit as much tragedy and moral posturing and require as much sacrifice as any other role Sonny saw fit to assume in his lifetime.

_ Assistant District Attorney, _ his new badge read _ , _fashioned in the same blue and gold as the old, but all the more brilliant for its novelty and prestige. 

_Dominick Carisi Jr.,_ a servant of the law once, and now, and always.

“He will also provide a way out,” Sonny uttered to himself later that same day as he set up his new desk, mostly bare save for a picture taken years prior of the only family that he ever willfully chose: his Lieutenant, his Sergeant, his partner, and his one great untended temptation. 

“You can endure it.”

*****

It’s not that he regrets his choices exactly—at least not the ones that led him to this particular seat at a mostly deserted Forlini’s on a Monday night—but after one long and grueling summer buried in case briefs and humidity, shuffling between training sessions, arraignments, and the occasional precinct visit when he could manage it, Sonny is exhausted, and alone, and in a little bit over his fucking head.

Oh, and did he mention_ alone_?

After his first full day in court as lead prosecutor (and a disastrous one at that, he’d be the first to admit), Sonny had no choice but to seek refuge in the one place that felt familiar enough to provide some degree of assurance without having to face Lieu’s concerned looks, or Rollins’s thinly veiled _ I told you so’s, _ or Bella’s forceful but well-intentioned _ cheer up, cupcake _ slaps on the back. 

He knows he’d be better off working through these inaugural anxieties out loud with real human beings and not just half-heartedly attempting to swallow them down in an amber liquor that he ordered more out of delusion than preference, but dollars to doughnuts, there’s only one person who would understand the maelstrom of doubt currently threatening to drown him alive; there’s only one person whose company Sonny would like to keep right now, and he knows that it’s about as much of a pipe dream as having the jury deliver a guilty verdict on this case. 

How could it be anything but when said person has gone nearly a year and a half without so much as a conciliatory text or call? Surely that’s a textbook chimera if ever there was one.

So in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, he scrolls back up to the top of his contact list away from the Bs where his thumb’s been hovering for the better part of the evening, puts his phone to sleep with quiet resignation, and turns it face down on the bar. He may be a glutton for punishment, but even Sonny Carisi has his limits; tonight, he will not be tempted.

He’s about to reach for his wallet to settle up the tab and drag his sorry ass back uptown when his hand’s struck still, not by another, but by the velocity of his own surprise upon first hearing that oft-sought voice:

“I believe you’re in my seat, Counselor.”

Now, a more logical man might attribute it to coincidence (highly unlikely), or praxis (perhaps an argument to be made), or maybe even Lieu’s well-meaning machinations (a distinct possibility), but in Sonny’s weary, slightly tipsy, perpetual pollyanna state, there’s but one reason such an apparition should appear out of thin air, and it’s nothing short of providence.

God _ is _ faithful after all.

“Carisi,” Barba hedges when his greeting hangs heavy and unanswered between them. Much like faulty fireworks, it’s perilous and unpredictable. “I hope you’re sharper in the courtroom than you are behind that bar.” 

He might mean it for a gibe, but there’s no confusing the warmth in his eyes, the shy twist of his mouth, the kindness underlying the words. That he should be here at all stands in stark contrast to the sarcasm he so casually wields. 

It’s _ Barba_, Sonny reasons, of course he would expect—no, he’d be disappointed by any degree less.

“Counselor,” Sonny says as he slides off his barstool and steadies himself against the countertop. Despite using it in excess the last few months, the title feels wrong long before it escapes his mouth, and for one fleeting moment he feels younger by years, once again naive and dumbstruck by simply standing in the presence of a man so mythic.

“Barba,” he tries again, but finds it twice as formal and half as benevolent as he hoped.

“Rafael,” he finally produces, unearthed from the depths of the daydream he’d been lost in not minutes before. Even so, Sonny surprises himself with the tenderness with which it’s delivered, but is unwilling to walk it back or cover his tracks; he is _ so _immeasurably pleased to see Barba, and he will make no concessions to the contrary.

“I can’t tell you how good it is to see you,” he says honestly and without qualifiers.

Sonny has _ always _ been glad to cross paths with Rafael, that much is certain, and though he may trust in the divine, he doesn’t so much trust such whims long ago buried in his heart, so he asks, “What are you doing here?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Rafael says as he unbuttons his coat and slips one arm out, then the other. He tosses it atop an empty stool then takes to the cuffs of his crisp white shirt, rolling them up in practiced haste with a cunning smile which won’t soon be forgotten. Sonny is momentarily paralyzed by the action and each new inch of skin that it reveals. 

“Uh, no, I’m not sure that it is.”

Though Sonny dreamed of this moment coming to pass by an infinite number of means, cast coins and rocks into rivers and wishing wells both tangible and imagined, mentally filled in his Barba-shaped question tree so as to guarantee a future he once let slip from his grasp, even the most reasoned pontificating could not account for the reality stood before him and all the implications thereof: a clever man long admired, once prolific as a legend, chased into a cell of his tender heart’s own creation, only to land back at Sonny’s feet as handsome, and daring, and devastating as always.

What on earth could be so obvious about that?

“Come,” Rafael commands from his new perch, one seat over from his once-station, but no worse for the demotion. He pats the seat Sonny had occupied until just moments before. “Sit. Relax.”

And Sonny may be many things, but a fool is not one. He does as he’s told.

“You look like you could use a drink,” Rafael says with no small amount of amusement. He motions for the barkeep and eyes the empty glass pushed to the side and then, not for the first time, calculates what it is Sonny might need. “Beer?”

Sonny laughs, an incredulous sort of guffaw masked by the puff of an exhale and a shaking head. “Yeah, yeah. That’d be great.”

They sit together in pleasant silence waiting for their drinks to be fetched, and if it weren’t for the occasional nudge of a knee and brush of an elbow grounding him in this precarious reality, Sonny would guess maybe he was dreaming the whole thing after all. But there Barba sits, looking back at Sonny with a twinkle in his eye like he knows something Sonny doesn’t, like he’s protecting a long-held secret now threatening to spill before and between them. It stirs a well-worn warmth in the pit of his stomach, and Sonny knows it’s real—even his best laid fantasies never felt so _ right. _

“I heard you had a rough day,” Rafael says into his glass. “Tell me about it.”

It’s miraculous thing, really, that Rafael’s unexpected appearance should wipe clean the slate of Sonny’s most aggrieved misgivings, but suddenly Sonny can’t think of one bad thing to say about the day, in court or otherwise.

“I dunno,” Sonny says between sips, “seems like maybe it’s turning out alright after all.”

A line, if he’s ever heard one—and a bad one at that—but Rafael is looking pleased as punch and, consequently, Sonny can feel the unmitigated joy bubbling up the front of his chest. He feels _ buoyant. _

“Well,” Rafael says, turning to give Sonny his full attention, “all of that well and good aside, I came here on a mission and I’m nothing if not goal-oriented. So tell me, how’d it go?”

“A mission, huh?” Sonny says wistfully. Of course that’s what this is, _ of course_. There should never have been any doubt as to how he’d find himself in such good fortune. _ Providence my ass_, he thinks. “Lieu set you up to this?”

A shadow crosses Rafael’s face then, just for a second, but long enough for Sonny to see the way it turns down the creases by his eyes and weighs down his brow. Though he’s not glad to see it there, Sonny’s better off for knowing he can still read the look at all. There may be small miracles yet.

“Actually, no,” Rafael corrects. If Sonny didn’t know him to be incapable, he’d say the man looked close to contrition. “You know that courthouse leaks like a sieve, and though I may be somewhat of a pariah, I still have my moles.”

“Oh great,” Sonny says as he hangs his head in defeat. “You’re telling me I fucked up so spectacularly that I’m, what, a point of gossip now? That’s perfect, Raf. _ Real _perfect.”

“Sonny,” Rafael pleads, and for all the time they’ve known each other, Sonny cannot remember one instance wherein he’s heard his name cross those lips, nevermind the fondness with which it’s now conferred. Rafael extends a hand, curls his fingers around a shoulder, digs his thumb into the soft flesh above clavicle. “It’s nothing like that.”

“Oh no? What’s it like then?”

Rafael’s hand stills, slides off and down the length of Sonny’s arm, squeezes right above the elbow before returning to the bartop. Sonny misses the touch long before it’s gone.

“I may have friends—or well, _ a _ friend, to be precise—who may or may not have prior knowledge of a certain...regard in which I held you, specifically, and who may or may not have surmised that I’d be particularly keen to hear about your legal exploits.”

He takes a sip of his scotch as if to fortify him against the truth of what’s to come. “And, well, she wasn’t wrong. On either of those fronts.”

_ My legal exploits, _Sonny mouths to his glass, to the empty bar, to no one in particular. It may be the alcohol, or the exhaustion, or the light vertigo he feels simply from being back in Rafael’s presence after such a prolonged absence, but Sonny cannot seem to make heads or tails of the words he just heard, nor why it rings in his ears like a confession.

After the protracted fumble, Rafael sets his glass down with a touch too much force and rolls his eyes in feigned consternation. “_Really_, Carisi? Are you sure you were ever even a detective?”

“Hey,” Sonny starts. He’s stalling, trying to work up a respectable defense, but the past eight hours in court seemed to have sucked that particular well dry. That and the fact that Rafael is looking at him with wide, expectant eyes gives him little confidence in mounting any kind of charge. He never was any such match for this man, at least not when his feelings were concerned. Why should that change with time or titles?

Instead of a snappy rebuttal, the words that first find him are the same as they’ve always been, branded in his heart and mind just as Rafael himself has come to be: _ He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. _

And then, as if the answer was dropped from the sky into Sonny’s lap, it dawns on him. 

“Carmen.” 

Sonny says it with a smile splitting his face. He can deal with this. He just saw her the other day. She was so happy to see him, and he her. O_f_ _course_ she would think to send a message after his well-being. She’s always been sweet like that. “Carmen told you.”

“Oh, wouldn’t that have been nice?” Rafael says around a mouthful of peanuts. “If I had known to ask, I would have in a heartbeat. It would have saved me _ so _ much grief.”

And then, in response to Sonny’s furrowed brow, “Rita. Rita told me.”

“Rita.” Sonny wracks his brain, combing through all the judges, and stenographers, and ADAs, and paralegals he can remember seeing with Rafael at one point or another, but he’s pretty sure none of them were named Rita. No, he can only recall one person with that name, but surely Rafael wouldn’t…

Would he?

“Calhoun. You talked to Rita Calhoun. About me.”

Rafael tilts his head with a grimace for being found out. “You may have come up, yes. Once or twice over the years,” and okay, Sonny will have to explore _ that _ particular bit of evidence later on. “But nothing bad, I can assure you. Whatever you think happened in there today, she was actually quite impressed with you and your-how did she put it? _ Enthusiasm. _”

Sonny groans, making it a full-bodied affair. He tosses his head back, looks up at the mottled ceiling in something like a prayer. Nothing good can come from Rafael buddying up with the defense, especially not when it’s the defense challenging in _ his _ first major case. If there’s anyone who had a bird’s eye view of his courtroom disembowelment earlier in the day, it would have been Rita fucking Calhoun. 

Just when he thinks there’s no salvaging the night, or his embarrassment therein, he turns his head and catches Rafael staring and the length of his neck, a new bit of color settling high on his cheeks. 

Sonny expects him to look away, just as they both learned to do over the years in a tenuous and unspoken agreement brokered over late nights in close quarters. They were always so close to the precipice of something _ more_, but ever the pragmatists, were also privy to the many ways in which a whisper of impropriety could destroy a career such as theirs, cut down a man by half and leave him aching besides—and that’s before accounting for the _ scandal _of it all: in such conservative company, two men should not lovers make.

But before all else, Sonny was a man of His word. So, he learned to endure it.

He checks his watch (also new, this one a congratulatory gift from his squad. “_You won’t be taken seriously with that Apple contraption strapped to your wrist,” _ Rollins had said with a light punch to the arm. _ “And we need you to be taken seriously, okay?”_) It’s still early in the night, the sun just barely setting over a weary city, and the judge did request a prolonged recess into the next morning. For all intents and purposes, Sonny’s got all the time in the goddamn world.

He plans on using it well.

“That’s nice of her to say, I guess. But how ‘bout I let you pass your own judgements?” 

“On what, your strategy?” Rafael appears to consider it dutifully. He looks down at his empty glass, traces the rim with a finger. “I’ve seen you deliver more than a few compelling arguments. I have no shortage of confidence in you _ or _ your legal abilities. I’d hope you know that.”

“Oh. Hey. Thank you for that.” Sonny smiles, sweet and small. Leave it to Rafael to hijack his proposition—years in the making, mind you—and make it something kind and heartfelt. 

“But I actually meant, y’know, _ my enthusiasm. _” He says it low and with intention, almost cartoonish in its flagrancy. He’s already made a fool of himself once today; he’s not concerned with doing it again. Not in here. Not with Rafael.

Rafael’s eyes dart not so subtly to Sonny’s lips, eradicating any doubts Sonny may have had about misreading the situation—now or before. There’s nothing left to keep them from each other, not duties, nor allegiances, nor space, nor time. They are both, maybe for the first time in their lives, free to pursue exactly what they want with however much zeal inspires them to do so.

“Well in that case,” Rafael says as he leans in ever closer, a hand skirting to the back of Sonny’s neck. The touch warms him from the inside out. “I have some notes that you may find particularly...Enlightening.”

The barkeep rounds on them but doesn’t attempt to break their carefully constructed bubble. Sonny ventures a glance and sees her sliding Rafael’s card across the counter, a knowing grin on her face. He doesn’t know when Rafael managed to settle up both their tabs, too distracted with his own plans to extend this encounter into something with gravitas or staying power, and realizes that maybe he’s been made for a fool in more ways that one. 

This time, Sonny doesn’t so much mind.

He shakes his head in disbelief, baffled by his own fortune, and this man who so willingly bestows it upon him.

“That’s good ‘cause I need all the help I can get.”

*****

“It’s funny, when you think about it,” Rafael says once they reach Sonny’s apartment after a mostly quiet and tense cab ride. “Amusing, if not fated.”

He’s hanging back in the entrance, one shoulder up against the wall, looking far too pleased and far too comfortable for a man who never deigned step foot across this threshold. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, not from such a force of nature, not from a man who made himself a fixture of every room he entered, swept through marbled halls and grungy precincts and common city streets with an earned entitlement so irrefutable, he brought even the most villainous to their knees. 

Now, Rafael’s casually standing in Sonny’s apartment (_My apartment, _ Sonny can’t quite believe it), and is as he’s always been: unapologetically Barba, as bold and brassy as strikes his fancy, as discerning and deadly as Sonny remembers him to be.

Needless to say, it’s driving Sonny _ mad. _

“Oh yeah? What’s funny?” 

For lack of utility to tether his feet back down to the earth, Sonny sets upon the kitchen to fix them drinks. The buzz from the bar wore off somewhere between 45th and 87th Street, and he’s since been jonesing for something, _ anything_, to calm the impulses thrumming through his heart from shattering the brittle bones that encase them.

Whiskey, he figures, will get the job done.

“Well, all of this, for a start. That it should end up this way,” Rafael says as he surveys the apartment before him. Much like his own home, it’s covered in books and files and legal pads, empty coffee cups and other such vestiges of a life lived not for a person but for a _ purpose. _ “I was hoping that it’d be you. I wanted it to be _ you_, perhaps even, at times, to my own detriment.”

Sonny's paralyzed over the kitchen island, stock-still and mouth agape. He couldn’t possibly be hearing what he _ thinks _ he’s hearing; it couldn’t be that _ easy_, not after all this time. He sets the bottle down just in case—he doesn’t want any more casualties tonight, at least no more than what’s necessary, and he fears he may fall victim yet. 

“I’m–sorry, what?”

With all the subtlety of a red herring, Rafael saunters up to Sonny with a smug grin upon his face, leans in close enough that Sonny can smell the cedarwood clinging to his jacket and the remains of a hot day in the city bathed in bergamot and sweat, and ushers a filled glass out from under Sonny’s hand.

_ You can endure it, _ Sonny reminds himself. _ You have and you will. _

“After,” Rafael answers, gesturing out into the apartment, encompassing the whole of their existence and all that came before, “I wanted you to be the one to take my job.”

“Oh.” Sonny’s face falls because that is _ so _ not where he thought this was going. What’s worse, he feels childish for thinking of such trivialities in the face of what was surely Rafael’s most trying time. “I hope you didn’t–”

“No, no, it was nothing like that. I had to do it regardless. _ Leave_, I mean. That, amongst other things, was preordained.” Rafael takes a sip then, and Sonny can’t help but to follow the action, chasing the liquid as it trickles down the glass and passes his lips. As if caught in the spectacle, Rafael finishes the performance with a quick whet of the tongue.

Yeah, Sonny is _ done for, _all right.

“In fact, McCoy could probably attest to one or two or fifteen phone calls he begrudgingly took at my behest, all to sing your praises. I’d be surprised if he didn’t say as much when courting you.”

That causes Sonny to take pause. There were weeks, if not months, following Rafael’s departure that were weighed down not solely by Sonny’s listlessness but by the DA’s dogged determination in following him down the courthouse steps, into the coffee cart line, even occasionally to the seat Rafael found Sonny in not more than two hours prior. 

It was a wild goose chase, in point of fact or fancy, but one that Jack McCoy took up with the aplomb of a man possessed by a fraction of his age and repute.

Though admittedly humbled by the effusion, Sonny mostly wrote it off as nothing more than a weak attempt at a publicity play. The office had suffered a near fatal blow, at Rafael’s hand no less, and needed a feel-good story to ease the mounting pressure from the public. Sonny didn’t go to Harvard, sure, but he could read between the headlines all the same: _Good cop makes good with the law._ _See? Look at our new ADA. He’s Staten Island raised, Fordham bred. He’s salt of the earth and he’s fighting for you, the people._

It was an ill-conceived tactic at best, an exploitative ruse at worst, but now that Sonny can see it with a year’s sum of hindsight, another quick departure, and brand new information delivered by Rafael himself, he thinks that maybe he sold himself short. Maybe it was more than the convenience that landed his name on McCoy’s docket. Maybe it was his reputation, albeit one so bolstered by Rafael’s astute and ardent insights, that landed him the job.

“No, he didn’t mention it,” Sonny says. He swirls the liquor in his cup, watching his resolve and humility disappear into the whirlpool of dark liquid. Anything, really, to avoid the softness in Rafael’s eyes. The affection reflected there is downright _ unbearable_.

“He didn’t mention you. Pretty dumb move, if you ask me.”

“Hm,” Rafael considers before throwing back the rest of his drink. It visibly alters something within him, shores up whatever resolve he was previously left wanting for, and buttresses him against the precarity of all that’s unraveling between them. 

Not one to miss chances, at least not more than once in a lifetime, Rafael takes advantage of his newly freed hands and places them on Sonny’s waist, sure and steady as the day is long. He waits, and as Sonny yields to the touch, his body loose and languid with the aid of strong hands and stronger liquor, Rafael _ finally _brings them together—their bodies, their mouths, their nethermost desires—after all those years left in wait.

It’s the warmth of summer’s last sunset, the sweetness of fresh tiramisu, the comfort of a simple embrace at the end of a long day. It’s the sum of everything Sonny once longed for but never dared believe could be true. It’s a doctrine he could learn to live by, and for, and through.

Rafael breathes hot into Sonny’s neck along where his lips have taken up residence, and without pulling away, says into skin, “That’s all it would have taken for him to seal the deal, a passing mention of a washed up prosecutor? Who knew you were so easily persuaded?”

“_Raf_,” Sonny groans, bothered and besotted in equal measure. “Can we please stop talking about my boss? It’s kinda killin’ the mood here.”

Rafael smiles then, just enough so that Sonny can feel the blunt edge of teeth carving into his jaw, and his body, and his nerves. “I hate to say it, Carisi, but you’re right.”

The absurdity of it, and that he should find himself here in this place, especially after a day so fraught with tension and failure, draws a bubble of laughter from the depths of Sonny’s gut. He lets it out into the air and settle over the darkening room like a friendly shadow. 

And in the place from whence it came, he once again feels the sweetest touch of lips, of mouths, of hearts torn asunder and mended back together at their behest.

“Hey,” Sonny says, wrapping his long arms around broad shoulders, settling in this new space they’ve created with an ease he didn’t know himself to possess. “Didn’t you say had some notes for me?”

*****

The next morning, Sonny wakes ahead of his alarm just as the sun has begun its arduous journey across the top of Manhattan, but for the first time in his adult life, he doesn’t so much mind the early rising. After a late night of strategizing, and bantering, and fucking (though not in that order, and none such isolated from the others), Sonny feels as though he’s awakened anew, ready for whatever the day or the defense might throw in his direction.

He looks over at his newfound bedmate, marvels in the way his silhouette is cast in exquisite chiaroscuro, how his soft hair lies mussed against rumpled bed sheets, how the long lines of him are left bare and vulnerable and inviting of Sonny’s gaze, his scrutiny, his hands. 

He sees all this laid before him, a veritable feast of spoils and temptation, and thinks of his father’s words, once wielded as weapons, and all that’s since been born in their wake: the tragedy and the heartbreak; the darkest moments of anguish; and now this, the promise of a new day, a new beginning, a new life crowded with meaning and passion and promise.

He thinks of a little boy alone and scared, huddled under covers, choked by the fear that none of this—a man in his bed, a lover at his side, a life of his making—will ever or should ever come to pass.

He takes Rafael in his arms then, scores the plane of his chest with the tips of his fingers, places a dry kiss upon a temple, and says to himself, to _ that_ _ boy_, with the fervent assurance of a man who’s made it well and clear to the other side, “God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out.”

Rafael stirs, lets a contented sigh brush over Sonny’s shoulders, squeezes Sonny’s middle as he’s lost ever deeper into slumber.

Sonny closes his eyes against the light, thanks God or the heavens or whatever powers conspired to bring them both to this bed, this city, this promised land, and whispers into a neck’s sweet hollow, “You can endure it.”

**Author's Note:**

> WHEW that was something, am i right? lmk if you caught my not-so-subtle nod to one of my favorite movies/lines of all time ;)
> 
> also, i guess it's time to reveal myself as @ashcart over on twitter. i've already been talking to some of you, i'm sure, but please stop in and say hi if you're so inclined!
> 
> btw, this verse is from Corinthians 10:13, swiped from The New International Version (i think?) which apparently differs greatly from the more traditional texts (a fact which i learned only AFTER finishing the damn thing), so i'm not sure if this would be anywhere close to what the Carisi's would actually use as their scripture, but hopefully it got the job done regardless!


End file.
